


Funny Bone

by Siria



Series: Nantucket AU [76]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-06
Updated: 2010-01-06
Packaged: 2017-10-05 22:23:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/46643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was a good run—the sand packed solid beneath his feet, the air burning cold and clear in his lungs—but John took the stairs from the beach up to the house too quickly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Funny Bone

**Author's Note:**

> Aided and abetted by Aesc, and inspired by a very similar incident that happened to me on New Year's Eve. If you're made queasy by descriptions of blood/injuries, this might not be the fic for you!

It was a good run—the sand packed solid beneath his feet, the air burning cold and clear in his lungs—but John took the stairs from the beach up to the house too quickly. There was a patch of ice, and though he windmilled his arms wildly as he fell, he came down hard enough on his knee to make him curse and swear. The one mercy was that it wasn't his bad knee, but when he pulled himself upright and inspected the damage, he thought that maybe he'd have to reassess his whole good knee, bad knee classification. He'd managed to scrape off most of the skin; blood was oozing its way down his leg, and his knee cap was already starting to purple and swell.

John poked at it experimentally, then winced. With the first shock worn off, it was starting to hurt like a son of a bitch. "Well done, Sheppard," he mumbled to himself, and started to haul himself up towards the back porch—those last twelve steps felt very far all of a sudden.

He let himself into the kitchen. The bright lights and the warmth, the smell of coffee, were a welcome change after the grey cold of early morning on Nantucket. Rodney was up and sitting at the kitchen table. He was still in his ratty dressing gown and he hadn't started editing the journal article which he'd told John absolutely, _had to be_, finished by tomorrow, but the coffee machine was burbling away which told John that there'd probably be progress in the next half hour or so.

"Hey, Rodney," he said, pulling off his cap and tossing it onto the kitchen counter.

"Hey, yourself," he got in response. Rodney had the usual heavy-lidded, crazy-haired look he favoured at this hour of the morning, which meant that any reaction was going to be delayed. John waited for it, and about twenty seconds later, he got it: "What the _hell_ did you do to yourself, John Sheppard? Oh my god, don't hold it _up_ to me!"

"Isn't it cool?" John said. He kind of needed to sit down, but waggling it at Rodney was much more fun. "Looks like you could scoop the bruise out with a melon-baller."

Rodney let out a strangled shriek and got up from the kitchen table. "You... you... you just stay right there!" he said with an imperious gesture of his finger. "Don't move!"

John had never been one to obey a direct order, so he hopped after Rodney when he headed for the downstairs bathroom. "Maybe an ice-cream scoop? Apple corer! What do you think?"

Rodney flicked on the bathroom light and got down on his knees, rummaging in the tiny, over-stocked cabinet beneath the sink—John thought for the first aid box, but this was Rodney McKay. It never did well to presume. "Are you unaware," Rodney said, voice acid and tart, "of how your knee is _bleeding_ because of that whole thing where it is _lacking in skin_?"

"Yeah," John said, looking down at his leg. It was hard to put weight on it now, but at least the bleeding had slowed a little bit. Not before time—there were trickles of blood running all the way down to his ankle. "Aww man. I liked these socks." He'd just gotten them broken in the way he liked them—not quite threadbare, but still nice and soft.

"You are bleeding profusely from a limb and you're worried about your _socks_?" Rodney said. Air freshener, tub cleaner and a pair of boxers went flying over his shoulder. "Where the hell is that first aid kit?"

"It's only a flesh wound, Rodney," John said. That said, it was starting to hurt a lot. Maybe he should sit down for a bit. He hobbled the few steps across the hallway to the living room couch and lowered himself down to sit on its arm.

Rodney's eyes appeared over the cabinet door. There was definite glowering going on. "I think if you're going to mention that scene in this context, it behoves me to remind you of my unfortunate reaction to it."

"That was fake blood, Rodney," John said. He shifted around a little, trying to find a more comfortable position. Cash, attracted by the sound of all the mayhem—usually it promised amusement for him; sometimes the chaos produced things to chase or inanimate things to savage—came over and pushed his head into John's hand.

"Exactly my point!" Rodney said, before producing the first aid kit with a low grunt of triumph. "If obviously fake blood leads to actual blood on _my_ part when I hit my elbow on the table—I mean, not much, but it did cause a blow to the funny bone, and that _hurt_."

That was too easy for John to pass up. He waggled his eyebrows at Rodney. "I have a funny bone. Wanna see?"

"No," Rodney said, voice edging towards shrill. John tried not to grin; round about 'shrill' was generally when the fun started. "_No, I do not_. Puns are never, ever erotic, despite what your, your _prepubescent_ brain might tell you, Sheppard."

John smirked at him. "'S'not my brain that's talking," he said, and shimmied his hips as much as a seated position and a bum knee would let him.

Rodney made some kind of noise that John was pretty sure wasn't English and flapped his arms around. It was always awesome when he managed to reduce McKay to incoherence. After a minute or two he seemed to get his mouth back under his control and, casting his eyes up to heaven, said, "Who, _who_, can be expected to combat puns when their, their... _whatever_ is bleeding out onto the living room floor while his knee is doing its best impression of a lumpy purple potato?"

That was a pretty cool description, John thought, but when he looked down at his knee, it was a little bit too close to reality. He poked gingerly at the edges of it and said, "Huh. Maybe I should put some antiseptic on this. Or... something."

Rodney rolled his eyes. "Finally, he sees sense. Yes, antiseptic. If not a _tetantus shot_. And a very large bandage."

"I dunno, Rodney," John said, because even though antiseptic was starting to sound like a very good thing, getting Rodney all riled up was always even better. "Maybe I should leave it open to the air. To, you know. Breathe or something."

Rodney went an interesting shade of puce. The cat went and hid under the sofa. "Yes, yes, and you know who needs to breathe also? _Me_. And looking at, at _that_ is making breathing without choking on my own spit _rather difficult_. So sit down—"

"But I'm already sitting down, Rodney."

"—and _but me no buts_, mister! I mean it!"

"You have the soul of a good Samaritan," John said as Rodney huffed and puffed, opened the first aid kit and got down onto the floor at John's feet. Cash, sensing that the humans were not going to be much fun this time around, went back to his usual sprawled state on the window seat.

"And you have the ass of a... smart... person," Rodney said, voice trailing away as he realised that that wasn't quite the snappy comeback he'd intended. "Now shut up and let me concentrate." His mouth was compressed and determined as he did something John was sure was very difficult—opening up one of those little packets that contained an antiseptic wet wipe.

John put on his best concerned face, scrunching his eyebrows together. "You think you'll have to amputate, doc?"

"No," Rodney said, "but I may need to _sedate_ you."

"Oh, Doctor Love," John said, sighing like an antebellum southern belle, "you _do_ say the nicest things."

Rodney glared at him, and rubbed at John's knee with the wipe with possibly more force than was strictly required. John tried to repress a wince. "Don't make me use something lethal, Sheppard," he said. "I'm sure I could find a way to infuse a wet wipe with something very lethal! Botulism, anthrax, _lemon juice_."

"Uh. Rodney—"

"Don't think I wouldn't! _Vengeance_."

John raised both eyebrows. "Is this where I remind you that _I'm_ the one who tripped and fell?"

"Mmhmm, yes," Rodney said, deftly cleaning several tiny splinters from the wound before examining it with a practised eye. He let out a soft grunt of satisfaction at whatever it was he was looking for. "And need I remind you who would be the one left behind if you had fallen on a nail and contracted a tragic case of lockjaw and died, hmm? Foaming at the mouth, no less. I am far too young to be left to play the tragic widower, Sheppard. It's all fun and games until someone goes and mangles their knee!"

"I wouldn't say _mangled_," John said. "Just kind of... mushed."

Rodney glared up at him as he ripped a large sterile bandage out of its packing. "Listen up and listen well, John Sheppard. Never again—_never again_—are you to use the word 'mushed' in this context. Or in any context, really. In fact, 'mushed' will never be used again, on pain of, of, _something horrible_."

"I dunno," John said mildly. "This is already pretty horrible."

"Oh, it could be worse," Rodney assured him. "It could be _far_ worse." And John couldn't stop the wince this time, as Rodney smacked the bandage onto his knee with a certain level of sadistic satisfaction.

"Oh really?" John said. "Gonna remind you that this"—he waggled his now-doctored leg at Rodney–"means you're not going to be getting any in the near future. So there."

Rodney flapped a hand at him. "That I can work around. I _am_ an engineer."

John raised an eyebrow at him. "Who says I'm willing? Maybe I'm just going to spend some quality alone time... with my funny bone."

Rodney peered up at him. "How long have you been waiting to use that line again?"

John would never admit to it. "Don't know what you're talking about."

"I do not understand you. Your knee has been reduced to a pulp, and you're making jokes about it." Rodney's chin tilted upwards. "You are absolutely insensitive to my needs."

"_Your_ needs?"

Rodney ducked his head and wouldn't meet John's eyes. "I don't like—I don't like seeing you get hurt, all right? I just." His words were mumbled, as if he were confessing to something embarrassing and strange—something that John didn't know already.

"Hey," he said. "_McKay_," and ruffled the fine hairs at the nape of Rodney's neck with one hand, because really, what else was there to say.

"Yeah, yeah," Rodney muttered, and pressed a very gentle kiss to the bandage on John's knee, but by the time he stood back up, he was pretty much back to his usual acerbic self—complaining about how ministering to John had contributed to his back ache and hoping that his coffee hadn't grown cold, even if his eyes were keen and bright as he helped John around to sit down on the couch proper.

"Thanks," John said, after Rodney had settled a blanket over him, turned the tv on to ESPN, and pressed some Ibuprofen and a mug of coffee into John's hands. His fingers, still morning-chilled, curled gratefully around the mug's warmth.

"Whatever," Rodney said, "just as long as there are no more cracks about your funny bone needing to be kissed better. Imbecile. I don't know why I put up with you." But he stooped to kiss John gently before he went back to his own work—mouth soft and warm against John's, stubble rasping against John's own unshaven cheek, the measured exhale of a breath spelling out all the affection that lived between them—and Rodney may not have been kissing John's funny bone, but he still left him smiling.


End file.
